Monday, September 29, 2008

We must design the destruction of ignorance and misery,and establish the reign of reason, intelligence and happiness.

–Robert Owen, 1817

The bricks pale in a private weather,hewn timbers kick in their sleep, mutterabout Owenites, the utopians who tiptoedout of paradise with frayed theories,left the ideal rooms vacant, the grass knotted.In the city in the wildernessthey learned there is no clean start,no simple day without the print of pride,secrets, stones weighing the sun's light,bet-hedgers uncooping black doves.When the text of the sublimeis opened to the exact middle, pages peeledevenly outward, the wind loses its wayin the routine intricaciesof the absolute cornfield, the unsuresurfaces rinsed silver,the whammy put on desire,the vision assayed by reckless endurance.In practice the smaller portions appear.Moderation, sharing, the sparse trophiesof communal experiment are old luck lostin gain, corners meting out damask.In a country that ignores its history,bolts a door behind the present,preferring the seductive touch of myth,there is no fame for the faultless average,diligent poverty, evangels of duty,the double-clutch of the spirit.Yet, some, escapees, from the Disneyland gulag,share the quiet roads with farmers,stop at this village to repeat questions,deliver the gift of conscience,nests of shade settling on children's shoulders.Snails spin on the green axle of gardens.The day cools, glides to a close,Aligns illegible stars.Possums cross the dead orchard where darknessis a relic moved from place to place,handed down, like suffering,to the smaller integrities, plumed grass,scaly stones, the blue throats of bushes.The possums enter the cornfield to splurge.The millennium means nothing to them.